UMass basketball Bracket Watch: Feb. 11

Welcome back to Bracket Watch, where we're charting the University of Massachusetts basketball team's season and keeping track of their path to the postseason.

Each week (usually Tuesdays), we'll provide you with updated schedule predictions, RPI ratings, and bracketology roundups to present the clearest, most complete picture of how the Minutemen stack up with rest of the nation as we get closer to March.

Will UMass make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1998? Follow along and find out here first.

The 2014 Atlantic 10 men's basketball tournament will be hosted at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn March 13-16. The first round of the 2014 NCAA Tournament tips off on March 18.
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Here's a statistical breakdown of the Minutemen's remaining schedule, as well as a look at their Rating Percentage Index (RPI).

After a tough stretch in which it lost three of four games and fell out of the AP poll, UMass has righted the ship somewhat, winning back-to-back games over La Salle and Rhode Island.

With just seven games left in the regular season, the Minutemen need every win they can get in order to boost their tournament stock with the NCAA selection committee. The lower their seeding falls, the more difficult it'll be to make a sustained run come March. Get a No. 8 or No. 9 seed, for example, and UMass would run into a team like Syracuse or Arizona in the second round of the tournament.

As you can see above, the consensus among most of the more revered bracketologists seems to have the team hovering around a 7th seed. That's not awful, but it still has UMass going up against the No. 2 seed in the next round if everything plays out as expected.

Overall, it seems the two wins have swung the pendulum from "Is this team even going to make the tournament?" back to "What seed can we expect?" I'd say that's a positive step for the team.

If they can take care of business at home against George Mason and Rhode Island and pull out a couple road wins against George Washington and Dayton, the Minutemen will probably feel pretty good about where they stand.

So, what do you say? Nervous? Still confident? Let us know how you feel in the comments below.